Category Archives: vulnerability

I woke up this morning with lots of energy and in an unusually good mood. To be honest, that I’m sitting here clear headed, motivated, and writing at 9:00 a.m. is mind-boggling. My heart tells me this is because I finally shined the light on the shame that was holding me back from community. Just the simple act of writing down the experiences that cause me to feel shame yesterday has lightened me. I feel stronger, bolder, more willing to be vulnerable.

Shame and vulnerability expert Brene Brown says the following in her book Daring Greatly:

“There are a couple of very helpful ways to think about shame. First, shame is the fear of disconnection. We are psychologically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually hardwired for connection, love, and belonging. Connection, along with love and belonging (two expressions of connection), is why we are here, and it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. Shame is the fear of disconnection – it’s the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of connection…

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”

Shame is the number one factor in keeping us isolated and unable to experience the connection that surrounds us. I’ve seen shame in action – in my mother, my ex-husband, and other loved ones. I’ve seen how shame causes us to withdraw, hide, make ourselves small, and isolate ourselves from connection. Being disconnected makes the shame stronger as we become lonely, depressed, addicted, etc. Our behaviors in response to our shame make us more ashamed. It’s an endless cycle until we’re willing to drag our shame into the light and say, “I did this thing or have this behavior that is wrong, foolish, inappropriate, or harmful to myself and/or others. I am sorry I hurt myself and/or others with this and ask forgiveness. I am showing my vulnerability now in order to experience that I am still a human worthy of love and acceptance. I did something wrong, but I am not wrong and know that I can do better.”

Being able to face our shame is a significant aspect of resilience, a quality that defines our ability to pick ourselves up after trauma and/or failure. Before we can recognize someone else loving and accepting us despite our flaws, we have to be able to love and accept ourselves enough to look our shame in the eye. To name what we are ashamed of and be able to continue perceiving ourselves as a good and lovable human.

Facing shame is facing our humanity. We are such complicated systems of nerves, hormones, neurons, thoughts, and emotions. Learning how and why we behave the way we do empowers us with awareness, compassion, and an opportunity to change something we don’t like about ourselves.

I’ve often said that I believe my mother died of her pain, but really, I think she died of her shame. She died completely alone, having driven away everyone that ever loved her. In the months previous to her death, she manifested her shame physically as a skin condition in which she said “fibers” were growing out of her body. She picked at herself mercilessly. Initially it was only on her scalp and she choose to shave her head and wear a wig. Then she began creating sores visible on her hands, arms, and face, so that the school where she taught first graders was planning to let her go because she looked too sick.

I can see now that it was her shame, her belief that her flaws made her unlovable, that prevented her from healing and building connection with others. I know she was ashamed of traumas that happened in her childhood and she was ashamed of being a less than perfect mother. I know that she was ashamed she was in poverty most of her life and received more help than she thought she deserved. I imagine that she was ashamed of being mentally ill, an addict, and being a co-dependent partner with an addict for years. I imagine she was ashamed for being unable to find a secure job that didn’t make her miserable until she was 50 years old.

I will not live or die like my mother.
So here I am, making myself vulnerable by illuminating some of my shame.

What I am ashamed of:

1) I am ashamed of having a relationship with a man who later became a community joke for foolish and immature behavior. I am ashamed that he rejected partnership with me because of my emotional and hormone challenges. I felt I must be too crazy to be lovable.

2) I am ashamed of a relationship with a couple who compared me to a feral cat and gave me a two page of list of things I did wrong on our last date. This time I was too rough around the edges to be lovable.

3) I am ashamed of a power exchange relationship with a man who objectified me in every possible way, including emotionally (which was non-consensual). I still don’t know why I wasn’t worth anymore than a fling to him. I am ashamed that I chose that relationship over Eros for a couple months. I am ashamed of how that relationship literally brought me to my knees as I hit rock bottom with my addiction to emotional masochism.

4) I am ashamed of being publicly humiliated by multiple community members who put my flaws out into the world in unkind ways.

5) I am ashamed because I was judged and put down by friends and lovers as too emotional, too loud, too woo-woo, and too irrational. I am ashamed of every time my emotions have led to violent communication, even if I was provoked. And I am ashamed of backing down when I should have stood up for myself and/or others.

6) I am ashamed of compromising my integrity and self respect by having sex, or certain kinds of sex, when I really didn’t want to on several occasions.

7) I am ashamed of the number of rejections I experienced in my relationship explorations and the circumstances around some of them.

8) I am ashamed of my last time on stage in front of the Imps community, as well as leaving the event early. I was exhausted and couldn’t find my joy or mojo (I didn’t know I was having such a hard time because I was pregnant). I am ashamed I couldn’t finish the job. Then when nobody contacted me after to see if I was ok or say they missed me, I felt more ashamed because it seemed like no one noticed or cared that I wasn’t there.

9) I am ashamed of letting my partners down (I actually have bad dreams because of this one).

10) I am ashamed of having Fibromyalgia and how it limits me and what I have to give to the people I love. I am ashamed that my life mirrors my mother’s in this regard, that pain plays a role in my experience of life every single day.

11) And most recently, I am ashamed that I haven’t found a job after 8 months of applications and interviews.

Writing these things down is hard, but it’s not so big and scary as my lizard brain told me it would be. With all of these situations I can see where to have compassion for myself because of factors that were/are out of my control. I can see that I am so much more than any person’s perception of me, or any of the judgments people make about my emotional and flawed nature. With all that’s evolved in me the last couple years, I am reaching a place of less reaction and more compassion, both for myself and others. Each of those experiences and relationships was a building block to the amazing life I have now that only promises to keep blowing my mind and take me into deeper experiences of love. But that can only happen, I can only deepen these connections, if I shift my shame to resilience and my failures to opportunities.

What about you? Consider where shame may be preventing you from connection. Take the risk of pointing a light in that direction. While whatever you are ashamed of may appear to be a lonely black hole you’ll get lost in, it’s actually an opportunity bring connection and love into your life.

There has been magic around my word of the year already. Within 24 hours of getting the word Community, I pulled a Tarot card for the year, as well as a card to show me where to find my strongest support. The card for the year is The Devil, which I have to admit made me throw up in my mouth a little, and would be easy to interpret in a hard and/or negative way (it generally represents the ego, the small self that wants to stay safe). However this line in the meaning of the card stood out for me, “One’s inner darkness and shame must be confronted, otherwise it becomes a chain.”

I recognized in recent months that I allowed my inner darkness and shame to prevent me from nurturing deeper relationships with my tribe, as well as resist building community in the ways I feel called since moving to Portland. After my year of Vulnerability in 2012 took me to my rock bottom as an emotional masochist, I’ve been hiding (duh – I was resistant to the word thing at first because I’m scared of having a word!). As a result, I have deep fear of being vulnerable, as well as shame related to my actions and experiences that year. In 2014 I have been taking what feel like tiny steps to start putting myself out into relationship, into art, and and public dialogue again.

I can see in hindsight this quiet and introverted time was needed to process and heal the heaviness and wounds of the last 6 six years, but now I am getting a resounding message that it’s time to turn toward the future I desire to create and step into my bigness again. Which leads back to community. I need to face my darkness and shame so that I can find my capacity for vulnerability again. It’s both exciting and terrifying (who wants to look their shame in the face?).

I also spent the last 8 months researching, gathering information, and planting idea seeds in the soil of my creativity, all in regards to radical mysticism, sacred activism, building resilient communities, creating belonging through radical inclusion, and the power of gift economies. The momentum is building and I am feeling sparked, fired up with inspiration. I have a notebook full of thoughts and information I’ve collected. When I reviewed it last night, I started seeing the bright threads that are weaving themselves into the foundation a web project and series of community art projects. So while this time being unemployed has been quiet, boring, and seemingly unproductive, it has actually been a time of incubation, the building of new life. (Huh – interesting to realize how similar it looks to the time I was pregnant with our magic baby.)

Anyway, the other card I drew, my support card, is the Queen of Cups. Which is perfect, because she is me. I bought the Universal Tarot deck specifically because I saw the art for this card and new I was looking at myself. Her description includes the following, which are my greatest strengths! “Emotionally based in a stable way. Powers to receive and transmit feelings with great subtlety, indeed she reflects those around her so precisely that it is hard to perceive her own true nature (empathy!). Pure soul, benevolent and receptive.” Empathy is one of my strongest gifts and is also one of the most powerful values needed in building community. Now that I am emotionally stable and have my needs for belonging met, it’s incredible to feel the power of turning to my greatest strengths as a means of support for this journey.

I am feeling a sense of magic and support from the Universe as momentum grows and I become more devoted to what is growing inside of me. Community is going to be a driving force in my life this year. Honoring that and guiding my choices by my values in relationship to community may be a powerful catalyst for a more vibrant existence as I enter into this new stage of my life.

“That we go numb along the way is to be expected. Even the bravest among us, who give their lives to care for others, go numb with fatigue, when the heart can take in no more, when we need time to digest all we meet. Overloaded and overwhelmed, we start to pull back from the world, so we can internalize what the world keeps giving us.

Perhaps the noblest private act is the unheralded effort to return: to open our hearts once they’ve closed, to open our souls once they’ve shied away, to soften our minds once they’ve been hardened by the storms of our day.” ―Mark Nepo

A friend of mine posted this quote to my wall on Facebook a few weeks ago because it made her think of me. I imagine she thought of me because I went numb with fatigue, pulling back from nearly every thing and everyone in my world two years ago. And I hope because shenow sees how I am opening my heart again.

Fall 2012. The D/s relationship ended that took me on a dangerous trip with demons and addictions in the driver’s seat. I saw Daddy’s addiction to taboo sex early, one of the red flags I chose to ignore,but I didn’t realize I was addicted to the havoc his sadism wreaked in my heart. It wasn’t until I found myself on my knees on my living room floor in the middle of the night, sobbing because he only gave me 5 minutes of his attention that night and I was desperate for more. I would have done nearly anything for more. It was a few days after that night that he ended it and something in me broke.

I stopped writing. I stopped talking. I stopped spending time with people, or when I did spend time I wasn’t as intimate, affectionate and open as I had been. Friendships suffered. My relationship with Chris suffered.

I suffered from too much pain, both emotionally and physically. The Fibro was flaring up for the first time, taking away my sleep andmy physical and mental capacities. More significantly, my heart was battered and bruised from a series of challenging relationships that ended badly, the one with Daddy being the final straw. I hit bottom in my addiction to masochism and playing the martyr. I was giving myself to people who used me, neglected me, and treated me carelessly. I used a quest for spiritual evolution through vulnerability as justification to put myself in harm’s way. While I can’t accuse anyone else of outright abuse during that time, I abused myself by making myself vulnerable to people who took advantage of the gifts I offered and treated me badly.

The withdrawal started just before the news of my pregnancy. Then I withdrew further into myself in order to give our baby the optimal conditions for life. The combination of Fibro and pregnancy wasn’t aschallenging as I feared it would be, but it was far from easy. And the emotional roller coaster of giving our baby for legal adoption (not yet knowing how beautifully we would become co-parents) took allof my emotional resources to process. It took everything in me – my strength, my grace, my patience, my love for the baby – to care for myself both physically and emotionally so as to keep the baby from experiencing too much stress. I could only allow bits of feeling at a time in fear that my heart would be crushed if I let it all in at once.

It took 5 months after Lake was born for me to stop feeling the heaviness of grief. There were many ways I felt numb and hardened, unsure that I could be, or even wanted to be, vulnerable to anyone again. But that time was also a time of deep healing. In the months I had off from work I processed everything. I found the gifts and meaning in my experiences. I recognized my addiction to masochism and decidedto make different choices for myself. I also experienced tremendous gifts of love and friendship during the pregnancy, birth and after. Ilearned that I don’t have to suffer or hurt to grow. That I don’t have to work or serve to earn love. That relationships don’t have to be boxing matches between each other’s wounded places.

The biggest surprise in my unheralded effort to return is falling so deeply in love with Chris. Our relationship changed and deepened withthe birth of our baby and the process of orienting to this new familywe’ve co-created. Somehow our time apart the last few months has brought us even closer, deepening our desire and commitment. With his love as a foundation, I am opening my heart.

Now I am here, making myself vulnerable again. The walls are coming down as time goes on. I am practicing how to reach out with affection. I am letting the right people back into my heart and learning how to set boundaries. I am learning to manage my energy instead of giving my power away and moving at everyone else’s whims. And I am writing.

I feel strong and brave and rooted in love. It’s a grand place to be.

Advertisements

I Am Because We Are

Dance With Me

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.